Melissa-Kearney

Economist Melissa Kearney with her 3 kids: William, Sophia, and Adelaide. William is named after her immigrant grandfather who was Vito, but who Ellis Island told he could be "Willy" in the US. (Courtesy of Melissa Kearney)

Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan, author of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Parenting is More Fun and Less Work Than You Think, with wife Corina, twins Aidan and Tristan, and baby Simon - named after the economist Julian Simon, who inspired his existence. (Courtesy Emily Korff of Veralana Photography)

Parenting is a good parallel as to how people would handle the money the government would give them in Paul Ryan’s approach to doing away with medicare.

The poor, uneducated, undereducated and those with bad luck would do a terrible job with Ryan’s approach to helping the aged through their costly health problems, just as they don’t do a very good job now at parenting, e.g., truancy, school dropouts, high teen age drug use, etc.

With bad parenting society is stuck with the bill in more police, more prisons, more lawlessness and weaker communities.

With Ryan’s health care financing we would have larger and more expensive charity hospitals for the states to pay for, a less healthy society, and the shame put on us by ourselves and others in advanced countries at how we treat the elderly in the U. S.

Ryan might not care today, but most people’s children and grandchildren would find their own assets sorely depleted by paying for the health costs previously paid for by Medicare.

Congressman Ryan supposedly works out and has a great body, but don’t count on his help as your children’s money flies out to pay for parents/grandparents expensive health costs. You aren’t likely to allow them to lie in the streets waiting for a gurney in the charity medical centers.

More proof of the sub par intelligence of leading republicans and their lack of compassion for the future health of the country and the deleterious effects they will have on your children’s wealth.

While I agree with the ideas expressed in the podcast that excessive parent-managed childhood activities probably do not contribute to either the child’s happiness or success, I wonder how to square that notion with the fact that some children do take to certain activities and like them. The world’s greatest pianists were probably dragged to piano lessons as children, eventually found that they enjoyed music, and make careers out of something they enjoy. If the dragging never took place because parents were worried about over-programming their children, where would the great musicians, dancers, etc. come from?

The broadcast makes it sound like economists are the only ones who have examined parenting and the nature/nurture issue, including twin studies. Are economists really better equipped than the psychologists and geneticists who have produced reams of research on these subjects? Do they deserve even a nod?